Suresh Prabhu urges start-ups to boost India's agricultural yield

India's predominantly small agricultural holdings present a unique opportunity for budding start-ups to explore ways and means to increase crop yield from small parcels of farmland using technology, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu said on Friday.

Speaking at the Start-up India Global Venture Capital Summit here, Prabhu said, "India has a very unique system. Almost all the land used by agriculture is privately owned, very small segmented holdings, and that is why we have an opportunity to increase the yield with a different kind of approach.

"There is an opportunity for start-ups. How to make a small holding produce greater yield with new technologies coming in, new support coming in."

Prabhu also said that the central government had conducted an extensive gap analysis exercise to enable industry, service and agricultural sectors to achieve more.

Also, the National Democratic Alliance government is putting in place new policies and administrative solutions in order to boost growth to a new level.

"We have almost done the gap analysis. We have understood the gap that exists for industries not growing to optimum level, services not realising their true potential, agriculture not reaching the height that they deserve to reach and all those gap analysis we have addressed through policy, administrative methods and everything else," Prabhu said.